Wednesday, December 26, 2012

The Year in Horror RPGs 2012: Part One 43AD to ImagiNation

ARMAGEDDON DAYS HAVE COME AND GONE

Here at the end of a year in which we miraculously evaded
the apocalypse, I look back at the Horror RPGs and RPG Supplements of 2012.
This was certainly the year of the crowd-sourced project with many successfully
funded by Indie GoGo and Kickstarter. We also saw many games arrive in the last
quarter; I’m surprised how many popped up in December. There’s a strong trend
in sci-fi this year, but also shorter story-driven games influenced by Fiasco,
and some quite narrow settings.

This is only the first half of the list; I’ll put the second
half up on Friday. I’ve arranged these alphabetically. I also put in a few “collected”
entries on this list to cover families of games and types. I’m sure I missed
some, so let me know if there’s anything from A to I which I’ve overlooked.You can find Part Two here.

There's a happy coincidence in that the game highest on my
wishlist comes first. I love games about the Roman Empire (and I've reviewed
many of them). I still haven't picked this one up. It echoes some recent dark
historical movies Centurion, Valhalla Rising, Ironclad, Black
Death, The Eagle, and The Last Legion. In it you play Roman
soldiers in a grim and hostile Britain, with crawling magics and horrors moving
at the edge of camps and settlements. There's more than a little Cthulhu
Invictus vibe to it, but in a narrower vein. I like the idea of Roman
soldiers inadvertently forced to become hunters. I'd read a series of novels
set in that period and place, like Ruth Downie's novels crossed with Brian
Lumley (or a better horror writer).

So this breaks my rule about second editions, but I have a
couple of excuses. First, I left this off of my previous lists. Second, this
revision and republication comes hot on the heels of the original version so
there's not that big a gap. Clockwork & Chivalry offers a setting
with several possible directions. For me it feels like a post-apocalyptic
historical setting with a hint of the fantastic thrown in. This is a world
turned upside down, with order at all levels overthrown. This opens the door
for other awfulness to enter and corrupt. Add to that the ongoing conflicts
between factions and man's general inhumanity to man. It feels like an updating
of the best parts of The Enemy
Within Campaign, early modern mixed with conspiracy and corruption. Two
additional related products cement C&C's horror resume: Dark Streets and Clockwork &
Cthulhu.

Another game I just spotted as I was putting this list
together. It presents another take on space-horror, this one centuries in the
future. It looks to have a little bit of everything strange races, distant
worlds, corruption of the Void, and lots of grit and chrome. It arrived just
after Halloween, so I haven't seen much in the way of discussion or reviews for
it. There's an rpgnet review, but it doesn't provide a great picture of what
the game's about or what makes it unique. There's a free 65-page quick guide
available on RPGNow.

Here's another supernatural post-apocalypse horror setting,
but different from any I've seen before. A figure with a strange philosophy of
absolute altruism wreaks havoc on the world demanding everyone aid one another
with no compensation- spiritual or otherwise. Those who refused were taken by
creatures from The Between. The game itself takes place ten years later with
the players forced to choose between acceptance and submission or struggling to
take back the world. I have yet read this, just synopses and read-throughs.
Written by Matthew
McFarland it uses a playing-card based resolution system. The system takes
into consideration the loss of PCs and how that can act as a spur for the rest
of the group. curse the darkness has many interesting ideas.

This one popped up on my radar a few months ago. It offers a
pulp-sci fi meets Lovecraft setting using Eden's Cinematic Unisystem.
Mankind has ventured to the stars and found the various eldritch beasts of the
Mythos. In this alt history, our ability to travel beyond our planet is tied to
discoveries from these creatures (stolen from the Mi-Go and other fellow
travelers). I like the concept of a background radition of weirdness affecting
people (and I start thinking about Event Horizon at that point). We have
several Lovecraftian sci-fi settings now: CthulhuTech, Yellow
Dawn: The Age of Hastur, Chthonian Stars).
I'll be curious to see how the system operates- Cinematic Unisystem, while fun
never struck me as a game for handling tense and dramatic horror. But if the
intent is something lighter, it might well fit. One of my favorite bloggers,
The Armchair Gamer wrote a review up of Eldritch Skies.

A new horror rpg which has been actively promoted and
supported by author Marco Leon. This has been a year in which I've seen several
small press and horror publishers come off really badly in their social
communications: rants, excessive defensiveness, insulting people who say
anything remotely bad about their work, sock-puppeting, and so on. On the other
hand, Leon seems to be an example of someone who knows how to present himself.
He's set up a decent community on Reddit, and seems to strike the right balance
between advocacy and listening to input. Mind you that's a superficial
impression on my part, but it is worth remembering. This game has risen to the
top of my next purchase list at least in part because of that positive
impression. Leon's quite open about new users adding to the canon, improving
audience buy-in.

Enter the Shadowside is a game of occult conspiracies, with an element of
"rent veil." The players have become aware of a reality known as the
Shadowside. The characters bind and partner with spirits from these realms for
power. Several different secret societies exist. I will say I had to hunt
around to get a clear synopsis of this from a couple of reviews. The publisher
blurb on RPGNow is evocative, but doesn't do a great job of telling the reader
what they'll actually be doing. The resolution system is unique, using a table
and a ruler to determine difficulty. There's a really excellent and thorough
write up of the game by the designer for the RPGGeek "Share a Game" Series: Share
a Game - Enter The Shadowside.

I'm always interested in games which use new mechanics to add
atmosphere. Dread's obviously the poster child for this, but something like the
Chance cards in the surrealist rpg Itras By is an attempt to add a unique
mechanic to support the genre. Epoch offers a broad survival horror rpg system,
with a focus on one-shots. The subtitle "Experimental Paradigm of
Cinematic Horror" doesn't do the greatest job of selling the system*. I'm
still working through the rulebook trying to wrap my head around the game.

Epoch reverses the general approach of rpg rules, putting the GM
discussion first. This focuses on player involvement, comfort, and buy-in. Epoch's
mechanics revolve around players being dealt resolution cards at the start of
the game and then playing them during challenges. Players who have exhausted
their hand go out due to death or insanity. The rules include a couple of
scenarios, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it actually plays. The game's
narrative focused- with players given the chance to declare and control some
things about the situation. Horror thrives on player uncertainty and lack of
control, but Epoch seems to substitute the randomness of the draw and
genre acceptance instead.

*It was politely and gently pointed out to oblivious me that the name of the game is an acronym for this "subtitle".

A horror-movie rpg, aimed at relatively quick one-shot play.
The GM role shifts, with multiple characters being picked off over the course
of a session. It also uses playing cards for resolution. The game focuses on
the inevitability of the tropes for these kinds of films. Author Bret Gilan
also wrote and published the brief horror rpg Cold Soldier this
year. That's a two-player game in which you essentially play a reanimated husk.

In my lists, I've tried to focus on new games and products.
I've also primarily stuck to 'professionally' published- but that definition
has changed significantly in recent years. Here are a few extra supplements and
games which came out this year that I haven't given an individual entry:

Having played a horror-themed one this year, Camp Death, I
will say they seem aimed at advanced players. I'd been warned about this when I
first played Fiasco, that the most ordinary set-ups offered the most
consistently interesting play. I didn't get that until I actually tried an
offbeat one. In that the focus shifted from characters and motivations to genre
trappings and tropes. We played out a story, rather than playing out the
people. Still I think Fiasco has legs for horror- especially with a
group who have played it multiple times.

A free rpg created by James Desborough and Andrew Peregrine.
The subtitle is "Roleplaying in a world of art and madness." The
layout and design is nicely done. I've read some older Postmortem Studio
products which were read to read. ImagiNation's text design is cleaner and
clearer. The artwork's more of a mixed bag and your reaction will depend on how
much you like "found artifact" illustrations and text. There's also
some real clever bits (like the CYOA section). In the setting, the worlds of
imagination and reality have begun to collide. In particular the British Isles
have been subject to the manifestation and manipulation of dreams and
nightmares. These lands have been isolated and cut off from the rest of the
world. The PCs play scouts heading into these lands for knowledge, rescue, or
other reasons. There's a focus on madness, and I can imagine this being run as
a darker Silent Hill style game or perhaps something more ambiguous,
like early Grant Morrison.